I was responding to the reference in GP’s comment that “…your name, address, and phone number would published…” which is the case with gulesider. Their comment was about pre-internet, mine was referring to the post-internet version. Apologies if there was confusion.
Additionally, the Wikipedia page on ‘Telephone directory’ [0] states:
> A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages
"Telefonkatalogen" was what other countries call "white pages", which is a directory of individuals.
The GP comment was indeed about the pre-Internet, but the whole point is that nobody publishes a big, widely distributed book with everyone's names in it anymore. You could literally get a book with every living adult in Norway listed. Sure, you have online services like 1881.no and gulesider.no that are the successors to this directory, but they're not at all the same thing.
I must be missing something; I can find pretty much every person I know in Norway in there by looking up their name (unless they have explicitly opted out).
1881.no also exists for "white pages", but it's useless because most people with mobile phones are not in the database.